Henry Esch was born in Schala, Germany, in 1826. He was brought to the United States by his family in 1842, and settled south of Milwaukee in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. After experiencing a conversion at the age of 19, he decided to enter the ministry and in 1848 he was received as a candidate into the Illinois Conference of the Evangelical Church. He became an itinerant missionary, sometimes covering as much as 400 to 500 miles in a single month, over areas of southern Wisconsin and Iowa.
